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Wednesday, November 19, 2014

Drafting Practice: Day Eight

Razor and Puck are tied middle, maybe with a slight advantage for Puck because of his mobility and evasion.

Spectre is going to flat-out lose his lane. Veno is food - his low range, low speed and squishiness will spell his doom vs an aggro tri. Even Disruptor alone would be able to zone out both Veno and Spectre. Enchantress will come online with a few levels and be able to help out, but by that time, the tri-lane would be lost (if she's not simply ganked in the jungle a lot). With some aggressive warding of both the large and pull camps, the downfall of Radiant's bottom lane would be complete.

Top, I think it's fairly even, and although I usually favour a ranged laner over a melee one, Weaver's low hp pool won't allow him to harass a Centaur with Return (at least not for very long). Centaur, being melee, might even be able to get some denies with a Quelling Blade (56 base damage + 32% = 71), although Weaver has decent early base damage (55, or 61 with some items), plus Shukuchi.

Dire have a better midgame, with Razor and Lifestealer online, although Radiant has some decent teamfight ults, with Veno, Centaur and Puck.... but little to combo their mobility ults with, and Veno's L6 will likely be delayed.

I believe Dire also have a better lategame, even though Enchantress, Veno, Puck and Centaur can all scale well... they aren't all that likely to do so given the earlygame setup.

I favour Radiant's heroes for counter-picking, but I don't think the lanes will go well for them. Spectre just isn't very strong before level 6, and even with the possibility of a side-pull from the Dire hard camp near the top lane, Dire should be able to contest these pulls and harass from range, zoning out Spectre almost completely. While early points in Nether Ward and Mana Burn will do work against the Dire supports, Dire has a LOT of early burst (Lucent Beam + Arcane/Concussive + Nether Shock), and have 3 ranged heroes versus 1 ranged and 2 melee.

I think the mid lane is pretty close to equal, possibly slightly favouring Viper (because he's just a pain to lane against).

Bristleback will probably do well against Faceless, given his Quill Spray harass, although he's unlikely to get a kill, and even at Level 6, Faceless is unlikely to be able to kill Bristle in a Chrono.

Given that I early-picked Void, I probably should have gone for a different carry, such as Gyro, who's ult and abilities would combo better with Chrono. I also liked the Invoker pickup, as he has several abilities that could mess with Void inside of Chrono.

Despite the laning definitions shown, I think what we're really looking at here is an aggro-tri from Dire. OD will do well against any Int hero mid, although he's unlikely to get a kill without a rotation from supports.

Anti-mage + Lich, with Enigma, is a great combo, but Enigma is not very helpful against an enemy tri-lane, and is likely to get ganked a lot in the jungle, especially at early levels.

I actually think the new Bloodseeker will do surprisingly well against Bat, and might even manage to get a kill if he can silence Bat before he pops Firefly (or if it's on cooldown), or after level 6 (Bat is terrible against Rupture).

Mid and late game, Dire's strengths are that Venge can be used to Swap allies out of Black Hole, and WK doesn't really care if he dies once to a Black Hole. Both DP and Bloodseeker have silences to deal with Anti-mage's attempts to escape via Blink.

Radiant strengths are that both DP and OD are quite squishy, and Bat should get enough farm for a decently-timed Blink Dagger, meaning pickoffs are quite likely on Dire's two cores (Lich, Invoker, and Enigma supply the damage). Invoker, Enigma, and to a lesser degree, Bat, can stall pushes while Anti-mage farms, as Dire really doesn't have that much push other than DP (until WK get a Maelstrom).

During the draft, Radiant did well to ban out a lot of strong pushers, while taking some decent anti-push. Dire banned out the tough offlaners, in anticipation of a roaming pair and/or aggro-tri.

I favour the Dire draft for aggression, but I think the Radiant side has a good chance of delaying long enough for Anti-mage to come online, who will do very well against the Dire cores.

Radiant wins mid, as some Cog spam should keep Pudge low on mana, and Clock is tanky enough to survive any of Pudge's burst. A roaming Rubick or NP isn't going to change that situation much, whereas a rotation from AA + Sky could be very bad for Pudge.

Bottom lane, AA + Sky should be able to zone DS out of xp range, but he might still get some farm with ion shell spam (which is also annoying to Slardar). Rubick will likely stay top and stack and pull for DK to improve his farm, though DK would do decently well solo vs. Tide (Dragon Breath spam vs. Anchor Smash spam).

Midgame, I think Radiant will have trouble dealing with NP's split-pushing, unless Clock can get some really good Hooks to gank NP, together with a well-placed Ice Blast from AA. In the same vein, Pudge could be really deadly to AA and Sky, both of whom would easily die to a Pudge hook + combo.

I think Dire picked up DS too early in the draft - Wall of Replica won't be all that effective against any of the Radiant cores, and Tide and Clock can easily jump on a Pudge that initiates with a hook.

I favour Dire's late game slightly, but I think this game should be decided before that, as one team (probably Radiant) snowballs heavily toward a win.